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HPN #Rio2016 – Day 2 Preview

We should note that these daily previews will look at medal finals only. HPN realises that a lot of people are here for team and preliminary events, so we’ve developed a daily watchability chart FOR HEATS AND PRELIMS ONLY. The ratings of finals are as below.

Last night was an absolute corker in the men’s road race and this shouldn’t be any different. Marianne Vos is an all-time great, a seven time world champion and defending gold medalist. But as we saw last night the Rio course, albeit a little different for the women’s race, is a tough one and prone to surprise breakaways. It’s a long watch, but worth it.

Favourites: Marianne Vos, Lizzie Armitstead, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot.

Probably should watch

Swimming – Women’s 400m freestyle and Men’s 4x100m freestyle relay

To reiterate, THERE IS JUST SO MUCH FUCKING SWIMMING. That said, Katie Ledecky is a legit phenomenon and is worth a look to see just how good she is as she continues to power towards whatever the record is for winning lots of swimming medals over lots of Olympics. The Men’s 100 relay is a banner event and Australia are a modest favourite over France.

Favourites: Katie Ledecky, Australia, France.

Diving – Women’s synchronized 3m springboard

Assuming you don’t care about a competitive contest (China will win), the syncronised diving is a fascinating study in people doing the same thing at the same time. Diving is just breathtaking to watch at the highest level.

Favourite: China

Favourite other than China: Italy, Canada

Watch it if it’s already on

Swimming – Women’s 100m butterfly and Men’s 100m breaststroke

The Briton, Adam Peaty, will win the breaststroke and the Swede, Sara Sjostrom, will win the butterfly, probably both by a lot. Peaty broke the World Record in the earlier stages without breaking a sweat. Just watch Ledecky instead.

Favourites: Adam Peaty, Sara Sjostrom

Fencing – Men’s individual foil

Foil is the shorter, lighter “score with the point only” weapon and the target range is basically the torso only. There is a whole fencing subculture and you’d better believe the users of each kind of sword have stereotypes about the other ones. Despite that, however, it turns out foil is the one nobody has strong opinions on. Which doesn’t bode well for its relative watchability.

Favourites: Alexander Massialas, Daniele Garozzo.

Judo – Women’s 52KG

History beckons for Majlinda Kelmendi, who is a real chance to be the first Olympic medalists for the newish nation of Kosovo. She’s a former World Champion, but the field should be pretty competitive. Erika Miranda, from the host country, is also in with a show for a medal.

Much like yesterday’s men’s team final, South Korea are very strong favourites. The best chance of an upset is Chinese Taipei and Chinese Regular.

Favourites: South Korea, China, Chinese Taipei.

Don’t bother

Shooting – Women’s Trap

This is not an event mixing trap, the musical genre, with shooting. As fun as that would be. It’s the one where they shoot clay discs.

Favourites: Fatima Galvez, Jessica Rossi.

Shooting – Women’s 10m air pistol

The main thing this has going for it is an open contest without clear favourites. The thing working against it is that it is people standing at precision guns on mounts simultaneously shooting tiny bits of paper.

Also! Did you know that not only is shooting segregated by gender for no clear reason, but the two genders have different events! Women can’t compete in rapid fire pistols, the prone rifle or the dfouble trap, and men have no equivalent to the 25m pistol.

Favourites: Olena Kostevych, Bobana Velickovic, Wenjun Guo.

Weightlifting – Men’s 56 KG

Have we mentioned that there’s a long list of banned lifters? Om Yun-Cho is not one of them, and should walk home with this one.